


Skeletons in Her Closet

by OxfordOctopus



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Boggarts, Female Harry Potter, Implied Childhood Sexual Abuse, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Sexual Assault, just all over the place, just how i write everything nowadays, short and bitter, so many goddamn warnings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 17:11:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19750132
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OxfordOctopus/pseuds/OxfordOctopus
Summary: (A scrapped scene from a story I'll never complete) --Holly hopes, quietly, that they won't get to her before the class is over. That Professor Lupin will do her a favor and not let others see her fear – that somehow all of this can be avoided.





	Skeletons in Her Closet

**Author's Note:**

> warnings: implied/referenced sexual assault, child sexual assault, childhood abuse, and shite teaching habits.

Holly hopes, quietly, that they won't get to her before the class is over. That Professor Lupin will do her a favor and not let others see her fear – that somehow all of this can be avoided.

“Potter! Forward!”

It can’t.

Holly stumbles forward, feels the fear slide up into her throat like gorge. The inky blackness swells, changing from the mummified body that Parvati’s had been. Fat bulges out from between the bandages, slick with sweat and grease, dribbling onto the floor only to vanish into a wisp of smoke. Vernon peels forward, erupting out of the emaciated corpse, bloated and thick, wearing his collared t-shirt, black slacks, belt and shined shoes. His walrus-like facial hair is much the same as it always was, doing nothing to hide the cruel half-smile on his face.

She can’t do it.

It’s with a quiet sound of leather being pulled free from cloth that the fear starts, rushing against her body. Stubby fingers pull the entire length free, drawn to the side like a girthy whip, metal buckle gleaming even without any real light. His smile splits further, Holly’s fear jams against the back of her throat and she finds herself retching weakly into the heel of her palm.  
  
“Come here, get on your knees,” the words roll from Vernon’s mouth in a drawl, a quiet whisper to his normal rage. It’s deafening against the silence. “You freakish _whore._ ”

His pants begin to slip, the heave becomes so much more real, too real, too much – _toomuchtoomuchtoomuch_.

“Riddikulus!” It’s not her voice that yells, it’s Hermione’s - she can recall that, however distant - that makes Vernon’s mostly-disrobed form explode into that of an actual walrus, falling away with a terrified squeal. A warm, though bony, arm wraps around her shoulder and it takes Holly everything not to flinch away from it. She’s pulled back into safety, though whatever someone’s saying is lost on her, the memories are too close to the surface, pounding against the backs of her eyes insistently, her heart too loud in the back of her throat.

Holly gags again, she tastes the bile. The arm doesn’t move.

Panic begins to subside along with the memories, the sensation of touch and invasion and _taint taint taint_. She’s been moved somewhere soft, pressed against someone who is that ever-odd mixture of bones and pillows, the touch like a brand that she can’t move away from. In the absence of panic, something else comes, swells against the little breaks in her composure and body and begins to push through them. Holly doesn’t know it, isn’t quite aware of what it is, until she takes her first, gulping, _shuddering_ breath, the wail - how could she ever miss it - pressing unceasingly against her chest, her eyes filling up with heat and nettles.

When the exhale comes, it comes with a wretched sort of sob. She can’t stop the ones after, her arms seeking out comfort, a primal instinct that the Dursley’s never quite managed to beat out of her, the desperation for love and warmth that was so hypocritical for someone like her, someone who felt hands like hot pokers and smiles like insults. She wraps around someone, who in turn wraps around her, and going from the way thick curls press against the bridge of her nose and the voice that’s murmuring comforting whispers to her is so familiar, it can only truly be Hermione.

Holly knows she doesn’t deserve any of it, but she sinks into it regardless.


End file.
